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tiny misplaced object
Monday, February 23 2015
Before Facebook, I used to be a little slow to find out about internet memes; indeed, I'd hear them referenced on the Colbert Report before I'd have the context to know why the thing that Stephen Colbert was saying was funny. These days, though, I have about a thousand different Facebook friends across my various identities (and, given Gretchen's 1150 friends, many more in my immediate network), and many of them are descendents of the 4Chan trolliverse, which is the Guangdong Province of meme production. So I tend to learn about a meme fairly quickly, or at least before someone from my high school post them. So I was a little surprised to only discover the antics of one Leslie Hall four days ago. Her glorious video "Tight Pants" already has over four million views on YouTube and she was named one of the 40 Greatest Internet Superstars by VH1 back in 2006 (whatever that's worth). Her personality can best be described as quirky and mildly repulsive. Like Amy Sedaris, she delights in portraying herself in unselfconsciously unflattering ways, though (unlike Sedaris) she is a plump, awkward woman. Nevertheless, she most of her videos showcase her tight shiny gold pants, anachronistic blue eyeshadow, and ponderously-endless dance moves. It's one part Weird Al Yankovitch, two parts Hairspray, and a dash of Lea Delaria. The videos feature a surprising number of supporting actors, some wearing tiger outfits, dressed as elves, or, in the case of her song "No Pants Policy," wearing pants that can be pulled away by semi-hidden strings. Many of the songs contain ear worms that just cannot be pried loose from the brain. If the songs were terrible, that would be a bad thing, but they're actually amazing, full of dynamics and quirky sonic twists. I would classify them as "highly melodic rap."
This evening I spent something like two hours trying to find a Sansa Clip Zip MP3 player I'd removed from the Subaru about two months ago. The problem with tiny electronic devices is that they are incredibly easy to misplace. I searched all the usual places in the house and all the "I'll just put it here for now" places in the laboratory, but I could not find the damn thing anywhere. Finally I looked into my computer bag, which it could have fallen into from the old water heater/cooler that stands unused (and serves as occasional shelf space). Sure enough, that was where it was.
In the process of all that looking, I became increasingly disgusted with all the stuff I have. I'm not even talking about the stuff I have that is organized and put away; I mean the stuff that forms a patina over the temporary-shelf surfaces. It's not just the Arduino shields, webcams, USB PCI cards, Ethernet cards, backpack buckles, IR remotes, skulls, hornet nests, dried-out 20-year-old tubes of acrylic paint, 64 ounce plastic grapefruit jars, motherboards, laptops, magazines, and batteries, it's also the empty (but inflated) bags from wine boxes, six outlet power taps, 2.4 GHz yagi antennæ, fibreglass arrows, empty cardboard boxes, cables of every description, Atmega microcontrollers, loose screws from never-to-be-fixed electronics, bottle caps, never-to-be-fixed electronics, and piles of old aluminum hard drive chassis. Seeing all that stuff temporarily cured my inclination to simply shop on eBay at the slightest material deprivation. I have a tendency, you see, of suddenly deciding that my life would go a lot more smoothly if I just bought some $5 item from China. But by the time that thing (whatever it is) arrives, six weeks have passed and I'm living with totally different problems. And so that $5 thing from China ends up becoming another part of the patina. It's an easy thing to ignore until there is a tiny misplaced object that I am trying to find and I'm running around like a maniac with a very bright flashlight.
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